www.martonline.in34 April 2014

Innovating MIM with enhanced Tool roomThe current industry trend in the automotive world is to bring about ease in manufacturing and sustain the same over large volumes. This has been felt more into the developing countries, where the production volumes are going up. MIM (Metal Injection Molding) is one of the emerging manufacturing technology that is helping a majority of the OE automotive companies in this regard for manufacturing complex shaped components in steel and stainless steel.

Indo-MIM which is a global leader in MIM technology, has always boasted of open innovation and is an one-stop solution for all technological issues. They are a company equipped with in-house tooling capabilities required for producing the MIM components that could be molded as per the customer need. One of the primary benefits of MIM is the elimination of expensive secondary operations by virtue of achievement of

tight dimensional tolerances through its inherent consistency. Getting this benefit with lead time that allows meeting the aggressive product launch timelines can be a challenge, when sourcing MIM components from a conventional PIM company. However, with Indo-MIM, this is always a dream come true – a mission accomplished. At Indo-MIM, they call it “Mission MIMPossible” .

It is indeed rare to find a

TECHNOLOGY

MIM-house with tooling lead time lesser than 12 weeks. When Indo-MIM was established 16 years ago, it was quick to realize that speed to market is very important to reach the global customers. It didn’t take long to realize that an in-house tool room would be a critical component of meeting the customer’s demanding lead-time requirements. Today, Indo-MIM sports a world-class tool room, capable of delivering 45-50 MIM tools per month!!! In some cases Indo-MIM is able to manufacture tooling and submit samples with leads-times as low as 14 days.

The knowledge and practices on how to do this stay in-house because the capabilities are in-house and the expertise stays in-house. Indo-MIM does not have to wait for the customer to figure out how to reduce the operations as they have teams of product and manufacturing engineers giving out the best MIM design possible at a minimal of cost, through a structures product development process.

Indo-MIM has a full range of state-of-the-art tool making and support equipment which is capable of making MIM tooling for components with weight varying from less than 1gm to over 200gms. Based on the complexity of the tool, the company can run from 1 to 32 cavities thereby helping to ensure that the molding costs per shot are minimized.

Good equipment selection is only half the job of developing a world-class tool-room. Indo-MIM’s real strength is in the hard work and expertise of the tool makers and operators. Constant and systematic training is a part of the ethos of the tool

room.

Not only for the tooling capabilities, but Indo-MIM also boasts of the 6-axis robot installed at its molding shop, which is not only responsible for consistency in the molding process, but also doubles the output by going for more number of cavities. The quality of the product remains good and due to the consistency, the part handling damages also get reduced.

Overall, Indo-MIM has helped global product designers realize their dreams in true sense by helping them modify both design and materials, to suit the end customer and application requirement. They have a very closely working and well co-ordinated team effort between the teams at their Marketing, Engineering and Tool Room departments, that ensures the customer to get what he wants and when he wants. The final aim is always “Customer Delight” and it is well accomplished.

Tool Room 1

Tool Room 2

Indo-MIM Robot

www.martonline.in34 April 2014

“In-house tooling is one of our key strategic

advantage in terms of pushing the boundaries

of what can and cannot be done in MIM.We,

at Indo-MIM, will continue to develop new

materials and increase our forward integration

of secondary machining and surface treatment,

allowing us to deliver shorter lead times

and superior quality products to our global

customers”

Krishna Chivukula Jr. CEO, Indo-MIM